U.S. accepting fewer refugees, study shows

Long the country that welcomes the most refugees in the world, the United States is drastically slowing its acceptance of displaced people.

From 2014 to present, the United States has not kept pace with surges in refugees as it has in years past, a fact highlighted by a Pew Research Center Study released Thursday.

There are more than 17.2 million refugees worldwide, but the United States is accepting only tens of thousands of them.

Year to date in 2017, the United States has accepted 28,000 refugees, fewer than half of the 97,000 resettled in 2016, according to the study, “U.S. Resettles Fewer Refugees, Even as Global Number of Displaced People Grows.”

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Phillip Connor, senior researcher at Pew, said the study was prompted by an increased discussion of refugee resettlement in the past several months.

The study compares the number of refugees worldwide with how many refugee arrivals come into the United States each year.

For years, the United States has accepted about 0.6 percent of the world’s refugee population. In years more people were displaced in the world, the U.S. would accept more refugees.

Until recently.

Though the 2016 number was near that average, at 0.5 percent, it was lower than previous high-displacement times and didn’t keep pace with the refugee population, according to the study.

"The refugee program has never been about what's good for us. It's about what's good for the person who's vulnerable," said Angie Plummer, executive director of Community Refugee and Immigration Services, one of two refugee resettlement agencies in Columbus.

Together, the agencies resettled upwards of 1,000 during the 2017 fiscal year running October 2016 to the end of September 2017.

"We've had a program that's helped to save hundreds of thousands of lives," Plummer said.

Ohio falls in the mid-range of states when it comes the number of refugees resettled here, Connor said.

It's hasn't been one of the top 10 states since 2002, though it's not one of the bottom 10, either. The number settled in Ohio has stayed well above 1,000 per year from 2004 to 2017.

The research also showed that the characteristics of refugees have changed over time as well, Connor said. More refugees are being settled from the Middle East and Africa, meaning they are also more often Muslim. In 2017, however, more Christian refugees were settled in the United States than Muslim refugees.

Karl Kaltenthaler, professor and director of graduate studies in the department of political science at the University of Akron, attributes the decrease in refugee resettlement nationwide to fear. There has not only been more discussion about refugees, but about terrorists.

Plummer agreed, saying, "I think it is a lot of fear."

In September, Trump announced that the cap for refugee resettlement for fiscal year 2018, which began this month, would be 45,000.

"The whole reduction, it doesn't make sense at a time when the world's refugee population is larger than ever," Plummer said. "No one's advocating that the U.S. should take all the world's refugees ... at 45,0000, I worry about a lot of people here whose families are going to be left out because the slots are full."

In years where the United States' resettlement numbers were steady, there wasn't as pronounced of a fear of the other refugees as there is now, and refugees weren't a big political issue, Kaltenthaler said.

Now, refugees are a hot political issue and the administration reacts to public opinion. Former President Barack Obama did it when he lowered the percentage of refugees admitted to the United States, and President Donald Trump has as well, Kaltenthaler said.

"Xenophobia has been a potent part of the political scene," he said. "Particularly in the last year."